School boundaries redrawn ahead of new Henry Lord opening

The former Henry Lord Middle School will reopen this fall with pre-kindergarten to Grade 6 students.

Michael Gagne Herald News Staff Reporter @HNMikeGagne

FALL RIVER — The former Henry Lord Middle School will reopen this fall with pre-kindergarten to Grade 6 students.

The reconfigured school is expected to open with about 75 students in each grade. Over the following two years, the school would grow to include grades 7 and 8.

School officials said there would be three classroom units per grade, each averaging about 20 to 25 students.

The makeup of the new Henry Lord became clearer last week when the School Committee approved the school’s enrollment boundaries. It included redrawing the zones for Carlton Viveiros Elementary School, Alfred S. Letourneau Elementary School and William S. Greene Elementary School.

Most of Henry Lord’s students will come from Viveiros and Letourneau schools. Those schools would, in turn, receive students currently attending Greene.

The new Henry Lord district will run from the city’s Corky Row neighborhood near Interstate 195 and south along parts of Plymouth Avenue. The district will cover neighborhoods between Cook Pond and William S. Canning Boulevard down to the Tiverton border.

Viveiros’ school zone currently covers the area west of Cook Pond down to the state line. Letourneau’s enrollment area currently covers swaths east and west of William S. Canning Boulevard.

“What we’re doing now, based on those boundaries, is generating a list of students impacted by those boundaries,” said Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown. Those students’ parents will be invited to come out to upcoming forums.

“What we’re hoping to do is have some neighborhood-type meetings, to show them what the school has to offer,” said Tom Coogan, the district’s chief operating officer.

Tracy Curley, an associate principal at B.M.C. Durfee High School, has recently been appointed principal of the new Henry Lord.

“We wanted to be sure we had a principal in place,” Mayo-Brown said. “It’s helpful for parents to meet the principal of the school.”

School officials are also currently looking at whether certain special needs programs throughout the district can be consolidated as a pre-K to Grade 8 program at the new Henry Lord to minimize students having to transition into different school buildings, explained Ivone Medeiros, the district’s executive director of special education and student services.

The parents of students who would be affected by such a move are currently being asked for input before a decision is made. Teachers and other stakeholders have also weighed in, Medeiros said.

Coogan said part of the decision behind creating the new school zones was “to correct those boundaries that need a little bit of adjustment. The current boundaries, a lot of them were woven together, after the closure of old buildings.”

“You don’t see a lot of schools that are centrally located. We’re trying to get back to where there’s a little more centering,” Coogan said.

Current pre-kindergarten to first-grade students will be transferred to the new Henry Lord school if they live within the new Henry Lord school zone and are not part of a district classroom. Current grades 2, 3 and 4 students will be invited to transfer to the new school if they live within the new zone and if they are not part of a district classroom.

Mayo-Brown said school choice still applies; if parents prefer that their children remain in their current schools, they won’t be transferred out.

“If parents decide they want to stay at their current school, that’s perfectly fine. It’s a family decision,” she said.

Coogan said there might be a slight uptick in student busing in the upcoming school year as parents decide whether to move their children into the new Henry Lord or keep them at their current schools. That uptick should level off after a few years.

School officials said the move helps reduce class sizes, particularly at Viveiros and Greene.

Viveiros, according to a recent presentation, would go from its current population of 761 students to 631 next fall. Letourneau’s population would drop from a current 648 students to 600.

Greene School would see a reduction from 860 students to 753 students.

In other transitions, Kuss Middle School would give up 58 sixth-grade students to the new Henry Lord. Morton Middle School would give up 28 students to Henry Lord and 10 students to Kuss. Talbot Innovation Middle School would give up 16 students to Kuss.